


that place uptown where the spirits are down but nobody admits a thing

by spock



Category: Wonder Boys - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Dating, Developing Relationship, Dom/sub Undertones, Drunk Sex, Love at First Sight, M/M, Pampering, Slow Build, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 18:33:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2783441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spock/pseuds/spock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James winds up feeding Terry half his plate, drawing a line at any more than that. Inbetween bites he tries to guess what James' job is: an actor, a porn star, a dancer, an escort, a young doctor, a philanthropist socialite; a dozen different things that James wants to be offended by, yet he can't seem to be anything but helplessly charmed, though he doesn't let Terry know that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	that place uptown where the spirits are down but nobody admits a thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gonergone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonergone/gifts).



He's halfway through breakfast when his eyes catch on the calendar pinned to the door of his refrigerator. Bright red sharpie telling him in all-caps _don't go to work_ in his neat, square handwriting. James frowns at it, wondering if he'd taken time off and forgotten, but then he notices the small printed type along the bottom of today's date, letting him know it's Secretary's Day.

There's no way in hell he's going into the office.

James tosses his spoon back into his too-soggy bowl of shredded wheat, mad at himself for not checking the calendar earlier and saving himself the wasted time getting dressed and prepared for work. He picks the bowl up and dumps the remains down the drain, flicking the garbage disposal on for a few seconds as the tap runs.

The call to his boss goes exactly the way James expected, cementing his decision to play hooky as the correct course of action.

After they exchange pleasantries, James miserably says, _I'm so sorry, Mr. Pallett, but I'm sick as a dog. I don't want to spread it around the office, not with the mad rush coming up next week._ His boss commiserates with, _Oh that's too bad James, and on Secre—_ , and James has to cut him off, before his pride gets shredded without even being at the office, jumping in with, _Administrative Professional's Day! Oh no, I'd completely forgotten. I suppose that makes me the worst Assistant ever._ Pallett's laugh is husky over the line, charming, and it takes James back to his first misspent weeks at Simon  & Schuster where James had the worst, most obvious crush on him. _No James, you're wonderful. I'll make sure this counts as one of your paid sick days,_ Pallett says. _Even though you're supposed to request those at least a day in advance._.

And there's the reason any romance on James' side of things went up in a gigantic plume of smoke. He's quick to get off the line after that, faking a coughing fit.

He changes out of his creased office drag and into something a bit more befitting the pleasant weather New York has settled into this April. It’s a nice break from the winter storms of two weeks ago or the quickly overrated heatwave from the week prior. He winds up at a bar that's more of a lounge than a bar proper, whose clientele is suited to a pay-grade higher than James'. But it's his Day and if he wants to play a little make-believe, he'll damn well do so.

It's just past ten on a Wednesday, so the place isn't anywhere near its full capacity. It's too highbrow for the committed drunks who frequent its plush seats to be hunched over a drink; instead the pretense of brunch and morning meetings are used, groups of no more than three spread across spanning gaps in the tables, mumbling out business deals and proposals, bitching about their bosses. And a few single stranglers nurse crystalline glasses while they flip through bound pages.

James sets himself up at the bar and orders something warm with no milk and just a splash of booze, smiling at the bartender as the bartender flirts with him, James eventually being charmed into ordering a half-stack of pancakes that are reportedly out of this world.

The drink arrives first and James sips it while keeping his eyes locked on the wooden counter of the bar. He knows from eavesdropping in the break room that some of the other assistants have planned to meet up today. To get drunk off their faces and make witty and sharp comments about how useless their respective bosses are, and how their unfinished novellas are so much better than the piss-poor submissions they have to read and summarize for the resident administrators. James hates them, truly — self-fellating harpies that talk big game while never delivering — but it's days like this he wishes that any of the people he works alongside were actually his friend. It's all well and good to hate the people you work with, but it's no fun when they hate you back just as much.

A pancake order that looks very similar to the one James placed comes out of the kitchen and bypasses James' seat at the bar. James tracks the cute waiter shouldering it as he walks back to a booth in the corner. He stops at a man somewhere around twenty years James' senior who smiles at the waiter rather devastatingly. The smile shifts into a smirk and his eyes drift over to James as the waiter heads back to the kitchen. He raises two fingers and honest-to-god _come hither_ 's in James' general direction.

James refuses to do something as cliché as pointing to himself, though he really does want to; if only to save him the embarrassment of reading this wrong. Tentatively, he picks up his drink — still warm, which is the only reason why his hand is slightly sweaty, honest — and walks across the yawning chasm of the room. He reaches the man's table in no time.

"Terry," the man says, introducing himself. "I hope you don't mind." He motions to James plate just to the right of him, next an intimidating stack of what appear to be manuscripts.

James introduces himself back, tacking on, "It's fine. I wasn't waiting for anyone."

Terry pats the seat next to him wordlessly, still smirking slightly. James sits down, awkwardly scooting his way around the half-circle bench of the booth until he's sitting right next to Terry, in front of his half-stack. Terry twists so that he's half facing James, cheek cupped in the palm of his hand, elbow propped up on the table.

Jokes on him, though, because James can do awkwardness with the best of them. He picks up his silverware and starts dividing the circles of his pancakes into triangles, ignoring Terry's gaze as it bores into him. Terry seems amused by it more than anything, picking up the decanter of syrup and drizzling it over James' plate with his eyebrows perched high on his forehead until James finally cracks and says _when_.

"So you're an editor," James says, not bothering to make it sound like a question, before stuffing two layers worth of pancake into his mouth.

"Is it that obvious?" Terry snipes the fork from between James' fingers, moving to steal a bite for himself. Mouth still full, James squeaks out in displeasure, narrowing his eyes. It makes Terry laugh, hard enough that his shoulders bounce, though he isn't loud or showoff-y about it; none of the other patrons look their way. James likes it.

Terry slips the fork back into James' hand and opens his mouth expectantly. James stares at him for a beat before letting out a sigh, finally swallowing, before spearing a few triangles and feeding them to Terry. James does his best to not let his face convey just how utterly, hilariously indulgent he feels at that moment.

"You're horrible," James decides, pulling his fork from Terry's mouth.

"Don't I know it." Terry looks at him as if he's done some sort of trick, unexpected but marvelous all the same.

James winds up feeding Terry half his plate, drawing a line at any more than that. Inbetween bites he tries to guess what James' job is: an actor, a porn star, a dancer, an escort, a young doctor, a philanthropist socialite; a dozen different things that James wants to be offended by, yet he can't seem to be anything but helplessly charmed, though he doesn't let Terry know that.

The food's gone sooner than James would've liked. Terry makes a show of hemming and hawing, gathering up the books he abandoned the moment James joined him at his table, saying, "I need to show my face around the office for a few hours, lest they forget my wondrous visage."

He asks James for his number and has him promise that he'll meet up with Terry later that night, hovering over the table and leaning into James' space. James agrees, and Terry makes him promise again, and then a third time. When he tries to see if James can say _promise_ in any other languages, James kicks at his shins and tells him to get his ass to work.

James spends the rest of the day in a daze, strolling around the park until the lunch crowd swarms in, then heading over to Sixth Avenue. He stares balefully at shop windows, debating with himself on if it's worth the dent in his bank account to buy something new to wear on what he's telling himself is more of a date, rather than a prearranged one night stand.

In the end he winds up making a compromise with himself. He picks up a nice spring-weight sweater from Barney's, of all places — on sale — with a vee deep enough that the stark relief of his collarbones look enticing against his skin, but not so low it's obvious the last time he actually worked out was in his sophomore year of high school.

James hops on the train and goes home to prevent any more nervous spending. Time seems to drag on, daytime television being what it is. He picks at the short story that's been developing more and more with every night that he sleeps, almost writing itself. It's not as good as the book he wrote last fall, but it's much less personal. If he finishes it up in time he figures that he'll be able to send it into a few arty lit mags to see who bites; hopefully it'll be published in one of the summer issues, that way he'll have some spare cash to go farther than his parent's house in Pittsburgh as a vacation this year. The thought is enough to make him sit down in front of his laptop and do a bit more than pick at his latest chapter.

Even though James feels like he's had an eye on the clock for the entire afternoon, dusk still manages to sneak up on him. He showers, does his hair, musses up his hair, gets dressed, changes from trousers to business slacks to jeans and then back to trousers again — a nice fitted heather dove pair that goes well with the dark blue of his new sweater. He has no idea if he's trying to come off as older or just in a better place in life than he is: established and with one of the creative jobs Terry guessed for him, rather than an office drone who can manage only coffee orders for men like Terry.

Terry calls him just as the sun dips below the lowest building in the city. The ringing of his phone takes James by surprise, though he has no idea why he expected Terry to be the type to send a text message. He wonders if Terry calls people because he knows it could throw them off guard — on second thought, James _knows_ he does.

"Tell me that your day was better than mine," Terry says, the loud hustle and bustle of the city taking second fiddle to the clear cadence of his voice. "No, wait — tell me that you're going to make sure my night goes better than the day did. You promised."

"I don't remember promising anything like that." James shoves his wallet down into his back pocket and fists his keys, heading to the front door. "Where did you want to meet up?"

James listens as Terry hails himself a cab, the door opening and slamming shut. "My place is easy to find and has a very well stocked liquor cabinet, among other things," Terry tells him. James can't hold back his sighed _oh_ ; frustrated with himself, disappointed with Terry.

"Actually, no," Terry says, plowing on before James can rally himself enough to agree to come over to his. "There's a place near where we had breakfast? Let's go there. I wouldn't mind being seen around town with a model-doctor-philanthropist-porn star like yourself."

"It's fine if—" James tries to backtrack, but Terry cuts him off.

"No, no, I really want to go out with you. I don't know what I was thinking; long day putting up with idiots made me forget that I'm a social butterfly at heart. Will you need a cab? My treat," Terry offers.

James declines.

It's late enough that the post-work rush is mostly thinned out. The party crowd is willing to act like Thursday nights are Friday-lite, but even they can't persuade themselves to throw caution to the wind on a Wednesday, so James has a pair of seats all to himself on the train. Twenty minutes after he and Terry said their goodbyes on the phone, James is reunited with him in front of the bar they agreed to meet at, half a block away from where they'd first met, another place that's more of a lounge than anything else.

"This street is starting to feel lucky." Terry smiles winningly as James walks up to him. "We'll have to tell our grandchildren about it."

"Grandchildren?" James teases. "You're very fresh faced for your age."

Terry shoots him an unamused look but says nothing, hand pressing warmly against James' back through the thin fabric of his sweater, urging him through the door and into the bar.

They go to another corner booth, wait staff shooting them disgruntled looks for taking up way more space than they need. Terry is completely unrepentant, and James follows suit.

He hasn't actually eaten since Terry stole half his breakfast and he tells Terry as much. While they're looking over the dinner menu, James says, "I'm not sharing with you, so you'd better order enough for yourself."

Terry jerks against the back of the booth as if he's been shot, hand coming up to rest just over his heart. "James! I'm going to have to tell you now, that's just not going to happen. "

"I promise you, it is," James insists. If this actually does go somewhere, James knows that he needs to start setting limits now. Terry is exactly the type who'll take an inch James hasn't even offered and stretch it out for miles. James isn't about to spend the rest of his life indulging Terry's eccentricities, despite evidence to the contrary.

"We'll see," Terry dismisses. Their waiter comes back and takes their orders, giving one last wistful look to the other side of their booth before heading to another table. Terry picks up their conversation, changing the subject. "Now, honestly, what do you do?"

"I work at Simon & Schuster," James says in a roundabout way, doing his best to drag out the inevitable conclusion to this particular conversation.

Terry perks up. "Oh? Are you an editor, too? Little young, though."

James decides to end it before it devolves into another guessing game. "Admin assistant," he says it fast, like letting the words run together will take away some of his embarrassment, or maybe turn them into some hybrid, mash-up term that won't have Terry looking at him like he’s worse than the gum that’s ground into the sole of his shoe.

Terry grins so wide that his face becomes more teeth than skin, body relaxing back into his seat. He sprawls so that his leg is pressed tight against James', tossing his arm over the backrest and his fingers playing with the ends of James' hair.

"And today is Secretary's Day," Terry says, absolutely gleeful, his fingers rasping against James' scalp. "So, naturally, you faked being sick and bailed out? Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy," he mumbles, tugging James' hair just hard enough to sting a little.

It's as if a weight's been lifted from James' shoulders. He lets himself lean back into the hand Terry has cradling his head, smiling softly Terry's way. "Did your assistant pull the same schtick?"

"No, she quit two weeks ago," Terry shakes his head. Their waiter’s making his way over with what looks like their orders, and Terry disentangles his hand from James' hair, sitting up straight. "Still haven't gotten around to replacing her. I told the girl who does most of my design mock-ups to take the day off, though. Left a nice little potted cactus on her desk for her to find tomorrow."

"That's sweet," James admits. He can't imagine any of the assholes in his office doing anything like that for him. Terry probably only does it to be contrary anyway; the only cool editor in the office, who all the assistants and designers climb over each other to work with.

"I'm positively delightful," Terry agrees.

Their waiter drops off their food and leaves them be. James got an Asian salad; bright green leafy bits with chicken charred just the way he likes it. Terry ordered a steak, blackened nicely on the outside, while the inside promises to have a little pink running through it.

"I know my figure suggests otherwise," Terry says, apropos of nothing, as he spreads a creased, white cloth napkin across his lap, "but I've never been all that into the salad scene."

"Then I guess it's a good thing I got a salad and you got steak," James hums. He takes a few bites and does his best to ignore the sad, wounded look Terry aims at him. "No," James says. "No I said I wouldn't and I stand by that."

"It's getting cold," Terry whines.

"I cannot _believe_ —" James starts to say, before cutting himself off. He gives the most withering look that he can muster and moves his salad off to the side of the table, pulling Terry's plate in front of himself and grabbing his steak knife. He cuts the meat into bite size pieces. "How old are you, seriously?"

"Old enough that the face still works," Terry gloats.

 

* * *

 

They do end up at Terry's. They’re at the kind of tipsy that can't keep its balance, so it lolls over into drunken territory before briefly righting itself, and then toppling over again.

Somehow James has gotten ownership of Terry's keys, Terry pressed flush against his back as James tries to figure out which one opens the front door to his apartment. It takes a few tries, but James manages, eventually, the pair of them stumbling into the hallway, and Terry kicks the door shut blindly. Terry prevents James from straying too far away by keeping his arms wrapped tight around James' waist, giving him a quick squeeze before letting go and stomping into the dark inner sanctum of his home.

Terry doesn't bother to turn on any the overhead lights. Instead he only clicks on the ones that sit on a few well-placed side tables, illuminating his living room in a soft, yellow glow that makes everything seem more intimate, cozy. He come hithers James again, and James does just that, carefully making his way across the room and pressing his chest to Terry's.

"Would you care to see my bedroom?"

James wants to, very much. When they get there, Terry lets himself fall backwards onto his bed, pulling James down on top of him as if James were a blanket.

They kiss for a good, long while. Terry's fingers stroke James' cheeks, his hands palming the curve of James' spine and eventually settling on a petting motion. His hands slipping underneath the fabric of James’ sweater and moved up and down the length of James' spine rhythmically. James loves how tactile Terry is; everything feels so much more personal, like it's important to Terry that _James_ is the one he's kissing, touching. James is starting to feel that way too.

James keeps his focus on Terry's mouth: the way their lips move together, the taste and feel of it. The terrain is unknown at the moment, but loses that newness by the second. James licks and nips, seeing what Terry reacts to and how, what makes him shy away, and what makes him push up, asking for more.

James is so caught up on what he's doing to Terry's mouth that he forgets this is all supposed to be foreplay. It's a shock when Terry's hands work their way into the wise of his pants, fingers brushing the topmost fleshy part of his ass. James pulls back and stares down at Terry, both of their breaths coming out in slow, heaving pants.

They stare at one another, Terry's fingernails scratching at his skin, trapped within the confines of James' pants. James gets lost in his head a bit, eyes stuck on how slick Terry's mouth looks, bottom lip looking a little raw from the way James had been worrying between his teeth. Terry's laugh — his smile — snaps James back to the present. Terry rolls their hips together, pressing up into James' weight.

"You've done this before, right?" Terry asks. He actually sounds ernest; James can't resist fucking with him a little.

"I'll have you know that I was at a god's honest gang bang last weekend." James keeps his face set, giving away nothing. Terry says _no_ , visibly disbelieving, so James carries on. "Honest. A couple guys swallowed down viagra before we got started, but I thought to myself: whatever, I'm young; I don't need that shit, right? And I didn't — thankfully — but god, Terry, my dick ached so bad that next morning, I didn't think I'd ever want to have sex again."

It's obvious Terry believes him, that he's intimidated and impressed and doesn't know which one to feel more. It makes James want to keep going, so he says, "Actually, god, all right so I haven't ever told anyone this but," he pauses, dramatic effect and all, making sure that Terry's hanging on to his every word, "my first time? It was actually a threesome. This Finnish guy picked me up at the library of all places, and when we got back to his place his boyfriend was right there on the couch, _waiting_. I was freaked out but kinda turned on too, you know? So I just rolled with it."

Terry makes a noise like he's dying. "Have you ever had sex with just one person? I'm really feeling the pressure here."

"First time for everything." James makes a show of acting bashful. "If you've got any friends you'd like to invite, I'd be okay with that too."

Terry actually looks horrified at the offer, making James wonder if he'd gone too far.

Turns out he did, but not in a bad way. Terry groans and punches him lightly, pulling back on it a little bit, but not much.

"You asshole!" Terry says, finally pulling his hands out of the back of James' pants and slipping them under his shirt again, fingers shifting against the soft skin of his sides, making James' body seize up as he tries not to laugh or squirm away. "What's wrong with you? Are you a sociopath? Tell me now, before I get too involved."

"Actually," James says, trying to get away from Terry's fingers, "sociopath has been outdated for y—"

"Oh god, you're one of _those_ people." Terry stops tickling him so that he can shove James fully onto the other side of the bed. "Shut up, shut up, and get naked."

James does. He tugs his shirt off easily enough and then he gets to work on his pants. He's just finished undoing his belt, moving on to the button and fly, when Terry sighs and says, "God, okay. I know you're lying about all of that, but I still kind of believe you anyway."

It actually — James feels something settle in his stomach that he doesn't want to think about all that much, so he finishes undoing his pants and shoves them and his underwear down his legs. He rolls back so he's facing Terry again once and sees that Terry's just as naked as he is. James wonders, idly, if he's maybe a little drunker than he originally thought; he hadn't noticed Terry moving at all, though it is entirely possible that undressing inconspicuously is a skill developed with age, and Terry's just that good.

Terry shoves a bottle of lube at James' chest, condom wrapper clasped between his teeth. James moves so he's settled between Terry's thighs again before he pops the cap and squeezes slick onto his fingers, hitting the lid against his chin to close it again before he drops it onto the bed.

James fingers Terry lazily, focusing more on spreading the lube inside him and softening him up than making any effort to massage his prostate. He uses his free hand to stroke Terry's dick, wanting him hard before they get to the actual fucking. Terry's hands find their way back into James' hair, carding through it languidly. James is sucking a few kisses into the insides of Terry's thigh, where the hair is sparse compared to the rest of his leg, when a thought occurs to him.

"Is this how everything is with you?" He asks. "Me doing everything for you while you just lay back and enjoy it?"

"I do like the sound of that," Terry agrees, speaking around the condom that's still being held by his lips. He tacks on, "You can fuck me now," sounding like he's doing James a favor by telling him.

James sits up and then topples backwards so that he's lying on his back, head at the foot of the bed. He jacks himself off with his still-slick fingers, and says, "I've never had anyone ride me before." Terry narrows his eyes, but otherwise takes the hint well enough. He finally removes the condom wrapper from his mouth, tearing it open with his teeth and flicking the foil somewhere to the left of the bed. He rolls the latex down the length of James' dick in one smooth, practiced motion.

Terry wastes no time in sitting aside James' hips and sinking down onto his cock, letting gravity do most of the work until his ass is pressed tight to the tops of James' thighs. James' breath leaves him in a rush, the sudden, almost too-tight clinch of Terry's body around him has him feeling dazed and lost, too caught up in the physical, so much so that his mind scrambles to find a common thread to hold on to.

He thrusts up, instinctively, hands clamoring to grip the meat of Terry's thighs, digging his fingers into the carved indentations of the muscle. James' feet slip against the bed a few times as he works at getting them underneath him, pressing his shoulders deep into the mattress for leverage so that he can thrust up easier, slide deeper into Terry's body.

The pace he ends up fucking Terry to is teetering on the edge of punishing; Terry bouncing up and down in his lap, James' dick never fully committing to an out-stroke, James keeping up a mostly continual grind, pulling out only slightly so that he can fully enjoy the feeling of pushing back in again; James wants as much of his dick inside Terry's ass as possible, at all times, and he rolls — _grinds_ pulls _humps_ — to make sure it stays that way.

Terry doesn't seem to mind; balanced on the points of his knees, back pressed against the fronts of James' raised thighs, using James' body like a recliner that has a particular set of added benefits. His dick is hard, flushed and bobbing in the air between their bodies, and sometimes, when James gives a particularly good thrust , it'll get enough momentum that it hits Terry's stomach, leaving behind glistening kisses that James can spot even though they're both covered in a fine sheen of sweat.

"Fuck." James watches Terry's face go tight, eyebrows drawing together, eyes squeezing shut. "Fuck, touch my dick," Terry tells him, bossy now. "Jimmy," he mumbles again, over and over again, like he'd done back at the lounge, voice soft, mouth making this weird little catching noise between each repetition that drives James crazy, though fuck if he knows why.

He lets go of one of Terry's thighs and fists it around Terry's cock, jerking him off as quickly as he can. He wants to feel Terry come around his dick before he gets off himself and that's feeling less likely by the second.

Thankfully, it doesn't take much more than the handjob and the continued grinding of his hips to make Terry come. Terry's mouth drops open and he lets out this wet, almost wounded sound, body seizing up and his dick pulsing in James' hand. Terry comes hard enough that some of it shoots up into his chest hair. James' own mouth drops open at that particular sight, a kink he didn't even know he had but now he isn't sure he'll ever be able to masturbate again without _thinking_ about it — and his own body locks up, groin pushed flush against Terry's ass as he comes.

 

* * *

 

With July comes the great exodus of anyone who has even a remote piece of clout in the office. All of them are pulling rank and burning through their vacation days to make the already long weekend into nearly a month long affair. James doesn't care — enjoys it, even. It gives him a chance to collect a paycheck while doing almost no work, sitting behind his desk and finally wrapping up the book he'd started back in April.

For the first time in his life, James has what technically counts as a significant other around the holidays, and he's pretty excited about it. The Fourth isn't exactly a gift giving affair, but Terry's got the whole month off — _clout_ — and he's bored with power. He keeps demanding that James come over after work each night, or he'll say nothing, and when James goes home he'll find Terry there waiting for him in one of the t-shirts from James' abruptly ended college years, the fabric stretched taut across Terry's shoulders and chest.

"I still don't understand how you do it," James says as he closes the front door, kicking off his shoes and shrugging off his bag. "Do you break in? Do you have a key?"

"I'm Spider-Man. I come in through the window."

Terry's got his reading glasses on, a stack of papers balanced on his knee. He hasn't looked away from it, not even when James came through the door. As a rule, Terry hates nearly everything that comes across his desk, and never does any more work than he has to; James is a bit shocked that he's reading drafts on his vacation. Maybe he really _is_ bored.

"Bit old to be Spider-Man, don't you think?" James says, walking around the island that separates his tiny kitchen from his even tinier living room.

"Superheroes age." Terry finally tears his eyes away from the pages on his lap, glaring disdainfully at James. "Anyway, why didn't you tell me you were a writer."

"What?" James asks, head stuffed inside the fridge, trying to see if he has any salvageable leftovers, or if it'll be takeout yet again. "I told you that I write at least fifty times." Terry lets out a disgusted scoff.

"Everybody in our damn industry is a writer. Hell, _I'm_ a writer. Why didn't you mention that you're actually _good_?"

James laughs, turning around and leaning his arms on the island's countertop so that he's looking at Terry again. "Yeah, that's something that wouldn't sound douchey at all. Can't imagine why I didn't brag about my writing prowess to the fancy-schmancy editor I'm banging."

"Editor boyfriend, who you bang. Exclusively," Terry corrects.

He's been doing that a lot, bringing up that they're exclusive, calling James his boyfriend. It always goes to James' head, makes him flush. The few times he's hung out around Terry's other editor friends, they've all made a point to pull him aside and ask just what the hell kind of crazy shit he does in the sack to have Terry so completely wrapped around his little finger. James is always at a loss for what to say, because they don't do anything all that crazy, and Terry's been like this since the moment they met.

"Anyway," Terry continues. "This is good — very good. I am going to publish this." He pauses, and then rephrases. "I'm going to _editorially guide_ this, so that it becomes brilliant, and _then_ I'm going to publish it."

James wishes that he wasn't so absolutely charmed by Terry every time he gets bossy like this, but he is; the shine of it never seems to wear off. "Don't I get any say in this?"

"When have I ever let you have a say in anything?" Terry shoots back, eyes focused again on the page he'd been reading, James clearly dismissed. "Make yourself useful and order us a pizza or something, yeah?"

James sighs, and picks up his phone.

"Oh!" Terry says, and then shuts up, impatiently waiting for James to finish their order and hang up. "This cover page, it's not in the usual style."

"Yeah," James says, walking over to the couch and sitting down next to Terry. He picks up his cover page. "My creative writing teacher back in college had this weird format that he wanted us to use, and I guess it stuck."

Terry zeros in on that like a hawk, for some reason. "You're from the 'burgh, right? Please tell me your professor was Grady Tripp."

"How'd you guess?"

"Oh my god," Terry sounds absolutely gleeful. "Oh, fate is so good. Everything is clicking together. James," he shifts the pages of James' book onto the floor and grabs James by the shoulder, shaking him. "Jimmy, pack your bags because we are going to Pittsburgh for the holiday and I don't want to hear any lip about it!"

"But—"

"What did I just say?"

James sighs and goes to pack a bag, because he knows Terry won't let him hear the end of it until he does.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much to gaialux for the beta!


End file.
